


Variations on an Original Theme (Op. 36)

by freddieofhearts



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: British Establishment, Date Rape, Disordered Eating, Domestic Violence, Erectile Dysfunction, Flashbacks, Historical Child Abuse Scandals, Hurt/No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, LGBTQ Slang, Late-Stage AIDS, M/M, Medical Procedures, Non-Reclaimed Slurs, Panic Attacks, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Transphobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Somatisation, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-06-25 06:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19740022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddieofhearts/pseuds/freddieofhearts
Summary: (or, the Trauma Variations.)to my friends pictured within.[Updated: Chapter 7/14, Paul Prenter]





	1. Roger Taylor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlownAwayEveryday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlownAwayEveryday/gifts).



> Thank you for giving me so much enjoyment with Encounters. This story explores the trauma(s) that Freddie experienced, which we have recently been discussing – just a small token of gratitude.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can’t really trust anything he told the press, that was always something of a dance … Not his fault. He had to protect himself.”

*

_Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. [...] The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself._   
– Jeanette Winterson, _Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?_

*

**Extract from an Unpublished Interview with Roger Taylor, 2017**

Freddie never came out. To me, it was obvious – I suppose I always knew, took it for granted. I spent more time with him than anyone else did in the early days, down the market and all. And we’d go out, too – just to clubs, and to hear bands, never anywhere gay. He wouldn’t have suggested that to me. 

It was in the way he looked at men, though, I could tell who he liked. If you’d asked me, I mean asked me cold, I’d have said it’s something I’d turn into a joke. I would’ve expected teasing – expected it from myself.

I didn’t get at him about it, though. Maybe it would have been too easy, or it was the way he had in those days of drawing himself up – it’s hard to put into words. He’d look a bit like an angry cat who’s also afraid. It was like he had to pull himself together before doing things. I knew he was shy, of course, but it was hard to realise how shy, sometimes. When he felt more comfortable he’d light up and his whole face would change. 

I remember him dancing round our stall, he was completely overcome – not easy to talk about, you know, even now. Won’t be much of an interview if it’s me blubbering into your recorder for an hour. 

It wasn’t any one thing that made him like that. I think he’d always been shy, that’s what he said. As far as I know, it was true. I mean, that’s what he said in private. You can’t really trust anything he told the press, that was always something of a dance … Not his fault. He had to protect himself. 

I don’t think I can talk about his schooldays. Not on the record. Relevant? I mean – yes, of course, but even with us, with me, it upset him. He didn’t like to remember. We did talk – and this is off the record, mind – we did talk about it, and frankly he had a fucking awful time, he was trapped in that place for ten years. 

Yes. Yes, that sort of thing. Not quite Savile, at least he wanted some bloody variety. God, he was such a cunt, wasn’t he? Did you meet him? No, I suppose you’re too young. 

Yes, we did. I don’t want to discuss it, honestly. Freddie’s school? Well, he – I suppose these days you’d say he was targeted. Remember, though. Off the record. I do know more, but I don’t see why anyone should know. I don’t think she does, no. She was very young when he was there. There’d be no benefit in telling her any details, it would only hurt her to know what they did. 

Yes. 

Yes, it still affected him. Of course. 

We didn’t really have the terminology that’s around today. He never saw anyone, not that I know of. And I think he would have told me. 

No, I agree. You shouldn’t be asking me that. Cheeky bugger. As it happens, I was pretty lucky. You don’t go through that environment without understanding the kind of thing that goes on, though. 

I think that’s why he talked to me about it. I mean, he knew I wouldn’t say stupid crap about him liking men – and what happened – I think he did fret about that. 

No, I don’t think he worried he’d want anything inappropriate. I mean the other way. Everyone knows now, he liked – big men. Sometimes older. You can’t always see it in pictures, not if he’s on his own or wearing those platforms, but he was so small. It was one of the first things I noticed when we met. And then you’d always see him, going around with these guys, so big they could pick him up easily … It wasn’t being gay. It was the dynamic. He was – I feel like a dickhead saying it, but he played at being a silly little twink for years. Even with Jim. 

Yeah. He put himself down a lot. I remember him saying if anyone was a dumb blond, it should’ve been him, not me. 

No, of course not. He was anything but stupid. I don’t know why. 

I don’t know. We didn’t talk about his sex life. I only knew what was going on if he came in upset, or – with bruises, something like that. It could get rough. People weren’t kind to him. I don’t like thinking about it.

No, it wasn’t just one person. 

I’m not going to say any names. They’re all dead, anyway. 

*


	2. Kashmira Bulsara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When Farrokh fails in his Class Ten examinations, there is a tremendous palaver.”

*

 _Come away, O human child!_  
_To the waters and the wild_  
_With a faery, hand in hand,_  
_For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand._  
– W. B. Yeats, “The Stolen Child”

*

**Stone Town, 1963**

When Farrokh fails in his Class Ten examinations, there is a tremendous palaver. Oh, the pandemonium! There is shrieking and crying and gnashing of teeth. You’d really think he’d committed a murder or two. How he has wasted the efforts made for him, thrown away this chance: what a silly little boy! Who in these times has money to burn, to cast into the fire like garbage.

Kashmira is sitting at the table listening, quietly doing geometry. Nobody notices a child with an exercise book: bent head, neat black plait, scribbling pencil. Question six, question seven, question eight. Hovering in her parents’ voices, in the voices of all the worried aunties who are crowding round her mother in the next room, there is something unidentifiable. As if Farrokh really has done something far worse. 

Why, he is not the first child to fail an examination, Kashmira thinks. She herself failed in botany only last term, and her mother slapped her hand when she came home and confessed. 

It is worse to be a boy, and in Class Ten, and still to fail. Of course she understands that, Kashmira is no fool. And yet the house feels clouded. Evil thinking, an evil mind. Only what can it mean? Farrokh is almost grown up, but not yet. He is still a child, and no one knows that better than she does. When he comes home the space between them seems to soften into near-enough-nothing: they are not boy and girl, older and younger, in a way that matters. 

Hard to remember that she is the younger when she can do so many more things than Farrokh, who has never learnt anything at school apart from English and music and a good deal about art. He draws frightfully well, but he cannot cook or even sew on a button. He can’t find anything in the apartment, not a thing! She has to do it for him but she doesn’t mind. Farrokh always seems embarrassed to ask her, and grateful for her help. Here is the shoe polish, she will say. We keep the mineral water here, now. Look! Your bed has a new coverlet. 

He is either petted or in trouble, when they let him home from school for the annual visit. Kashmira hears her father shouting at him early in the morning: the anger, not the words. When Farrokh emerges she can see he’s been crying. Why would anybody shout at him, he is terribly inoffensive. He always wants to please. 

Alone, playing records with him, she makes him laugh. Watches his cheeks flush and sees him get more and more excited. 

Silly decadent boy! She hears the aunties saying. Why does he spend all his time playing about with Western music? No-good boy! 

She expects to hear her mother contradict this, but her mother is a point of silence in the middle of the clamour. She has said nothing at all. 

Kashmira never prays. She has already decided that she doesn’t care for any of this, doesn’t believe it, not a scrap, though it won’t do to say so. Last time he was at home she watched Farrokh’s face, strained and half-frightened under his white topi. 

He lay on her bed with her. Both their parents were out, it wasn’t too late, but the air was cooling slightly. She tried to cuddle up to him, like she still does with her mother occasionally, though she’s too big now. Only he pulled right away, pulled back and pressed himself against the wall. She didn’t know what was the matter. He said, Can we not touch. Not talk. 

His voice, a ghost of a voice. 

And she lay still without answering him: she wasn’t angry, but she felt half hurt and half aware for once of her own failure, of something present that she could not understand. As if Farrokh is not really in the room with her. Or as if he is talking to somebody else entirely.

A waste! They are saying. And he was so promising. Such a bright child, only shy. What can have happened, says an auntie, her voice trilling like a bird’s. What in the world went wrong. 

*


	3. Brian May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The price of respectability, he notes, is two plates: smashed to smithereens.”

*

 _Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard._  
– Bessel Van Der Kolk, _The Body Keeps the Score_

*

**Extract From a Letter Written to Harold May, 1971**

‘[...]He wasn’t trying to be rude, it’s just how Freddie is. I’m sorry, Dad. He gets awfully nervous; he’s a shy person at bottom. Whatever you might be thinking – it’s not that I want to bring him round again, of course I’ll do what you and Mum ask, and I apologise for the damage. He asked me to say how sorry he is. He’s mortified, if you want to know. But he wasn’t drugging or anything of the sort, it really was a fainting fit. He gets worked up, and he was so nervous about meeting you’ 

Brian pauses: the ready stream of words has dried. His inclination is to say more, to offer further excuses for Freddie. 

‘He barely eats. Not enough to keep a sparrow alive.’

Only Mum never got the chance to observe that, did she? To make the remark she surely would have made. He’s filling it in for her. He can do all the voices. 

‘He says he’s had them on and off for years, even when he was a kid.’ 

Only Harold May would doubtless think: all the more reason to have conquered it by now. Why let such a weakness linger on? 

Brian thinks, but does not write – he is worse in small groups. In a crowd he can draw the eye, then disappear. Dad won’t understand that, won’t give a damn. 

Freddie is not usually car-sick, but they had to pull over on the way for him to vomit into somebody’s unlucky privet hedge. Brian stayed in the car, idling the engine, while Roger climbed out and rubbed Freddie’s narrow back. 

“Just a bit nervous,” Freddie whispered by way of excuse, when he was in his seat again, limp and sweaty and young-looking. He’s never seemed less like a rockstar. Or to be precise: a future rockstar, maybe. 

Brian’s not one to tempt fate. He is ambitious, but not hubristic. 

The price of respectability, he notes, is two plates: smashed to smithereens. One rug: stained. It’s as well to tabulate these things, you never know when you might want to recall the information. 

Dad was only shouting for a moment, and although Brian thinks it’s unreasonable to care about a couple of plates – well, they’re of different generations. It doesn’t mean he agrees. You have to be tolerant, don’t you?

Mum didn’t shout, she knelt by Freddie and touched his forehead. Brian got him a glass of water. By the time he came back, Freddie was sitting up with Roger’s arm round him. 

Dad had left the room. 

Brian thinks of writing, _He cried in the car_. Of course he doesn’t write that: there’d be no hope at all for Dad and Freddie if he did. It was in the back seat, which they’d given him all to himself so he could curl up if he wanted to. 

He adds a full stop to the end of the sentence about Freddie. He’s probably already said too much. 

He writes:

I’d like to come on my own next time so we can talk, 

*


	4. Bill Reid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I picked this up for us ’cause I thought we’d eat dinner together, not for you to act like a teenage bulimic. No one ever told you it’s gross?”
> 
> cn: particular abuse warning for this.

*

 _Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves._  
– Angela Carter, _The Company of Wolves_

*

**New York City, 1981**

Jesus Christ, if you’re that nervous, see a shrink. No one wants to fuck a bawling kid. What’s the point of being in the city if you can’t get your neuroses taken care of and have some goddamn fun. Get real. 

It’s not all the Tunnel and the Saint and the Anvil. Getting fucked till you can’t stand up over at Fire Island. Oh, I’m sure. You think that’s New York, don’t you? You’re a tramp, but I knew that from day one. Of course you wouldn’t have found a fucking doctor to sort out your issues when you could be spending that time with a cock in your mouth. 

How many times do I have to tell you? You better listen. You better. 

What, do you need your _Mama_ to cut it up for you? Gonna barf again? I picked this up for us ’cause I thought we’d eat dinner together, not for you to act like a teenage bulimic. No one ever told you it’s gross? 

Slut.

Oh, I know, I know it’s what you want. Come on, baby. Not gonna hurt you. Open up. Yeah, like – 

I’m beat. No, I’m not gonna – 

Finish yourself. Fuck off, Freddie. 

Go whining to Pheeebs if you want, but you’re not coming back. You know damn well I’ve never really hurt you. Little bitch. 

I’ll slam my own door if I want to. 

Just get over here. 

Keep serving this fishy shit and I’m gonna cut your fucking throat. You know I want you looking like a guy, like you got a cock in there somewhere. 

Quit it. 

Well, try harder. Those waterworks don’t work on me, Freddie, I’ve told you before. Save it for your twink friends. 

Slut. 

If you ever piss yourself in my apartment again, I’ll kill you. 

No, you look like shit. 

Take a Xanax or something. 

Hold still. 

*


	5. Peter Freestone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s hardly awake. He seems rather frightened.”

*

_For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him._

_He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not._

_Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted._

– _Isaiah_ 53:2-4

*

**A Shopping List and Some Notes, in Peter Freestone’s Hand, 1990**

“Green beans  
3 doz. Oranges  
Sheba (G off chicken)  
Baby wipes  
Eggs  
Basmati  
Tissues  
[illegible]  
Fruit - Freddie, house  
Butter  
Cotton wool  
Sudocrem  
Arrowroot  
No More Tears  
Marmite  
Bleach, [illegible]

Order gloves! 2 cases (3?)

Mem. GA coming tonight, not tomorrow,  
ask about [illegible]” 

Thank heaven for Joe, and his patience. For Dave Clark’s unflagging kindness: how he can sit with Freddie hour upon hour as Freddie gets ever more tired, peevish and difficult. How he never has to say that he doesn’t find all of this disgusting, or at least not intolerably so; he’s there, isn’t he? Freddie is in tears, sheer fatigue splintering him into a boy, an old man, an invalid – no, no, he won’t let them take his pulse. 

As if he could stop anyone from doing anything they wanted! Now. Peter doesn’t want to know that that’s half the problem, that it always has been: it’s not that he is so much less able to say, Stop, let me alone. He has never quite been able to. Whenever, however that switch was flipped, nothing has ever changed it back, not inside Freddie, where it is most sore and most secret. Oh God, he thinks occasionally, and never speaks out loud. That poor child. He’s never needed any details. Doesn’t want them. 

Pulse. He’s brady, the nurse says, looking up significantly. Her grave face. No need for a transfer yet. But we’ll do it again in five… 

Dave never helps with the nursing; he isn’t there for that, but to remind Freddie that despite it all, he’s still human. That there are friends who don’t mind all this, sitting through it. No, it’s okay. I really don’t care, Freddie. Lunch no sooner down than back up, and they’re cleaning him up, almost time for the next set of obs. Joe, can you–? 

Freddie lies still, exhausted. 

Now he’s tachy. 

He opens his eyes, rouses a little and makes the same joke that he can never resist when this dubious abbreviation appears: “Darling! Never that. Retract the accusation.” 

The wording varies, but infallibly it wakes him up slightly. He whispers through grey lips, holding Dave’s hand, “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer, dear…” 

Is he sleeping? 

Obs. 

Peter sits him up, gives him juice. He’s hardly awake. He seems rather frightened. 

Obs. 

Dave comes back from dinner; he nearly always does this, and the long day’s gentleness is only seen by a few, but Phoebe is there. Joe is there. These moments when it’s a choice of sorts between pain and being sick. The last part of the day, the most exhausted: necessary things are tortures. Obs. Sip of water. Obs. Bedpan. Obs. Sip this. Joe has made a meal, but there’s no use bringing anything upstairs. Dave is holding his hand again. 

Obs. 

The venflon hurts. Jim’s saying shh, hush. No one, or at least no one at home, says stupid things now like Be brave, or It won’t hurt for long. That’s been got out of the way. He’s thrown things, sobbed: fuck that, fuck, it _does_ hurt. 

Of course, Peter thinks he is brave just the same. 

She’s dressing the site. He’s making a small sound nobody wants to hear, although Jim and Dave are holding him carefully, still and safe.

Obs. 

Oh, he still isn’t quiet. Oh, that sound. 

  
*


	6. Mary Austin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Particular **abuse warning** for this chapter. 
> 
> (All headlines are real. Biba really did sell bottles of almond oil.)

*

 _There’s a stake in your fat black heart_  
_And the villagers never liked you._  
_They are dancing and stamping on you._  
_They always_ knew _it was you._  
_Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through._  
– Sylvia Plath, from ‘Daddy’ 

*

**‘David Bowie had sex with me when I was fifteen’, The Mirror, 2019**

She meets the Ocado delivery first thing. Carries in the bags herself. Sixty is the new forty, and seventy’s the new fifty. So when do you get to be old? No one wants to be; this is mere idle curiosity. Lip balm. P50 lotion. Who isn’t clinging to beauty, such as it is or was – those gone, of course, that’s one answer. 

Try to imagine him turning sixty, go on. Oh, have a go. It’s a blank spot on the paper. A cig burn on a velvet sofa. Where there should be at least the imagination of something – some marvellous party – and isn’t that a song too, isn’t it? She’s heard him play it, camping it up madly. Quite for no reason I’m here for the season and high as a kite. Everyone’s here, frightfully gay! Nobody cares what people say... 

Noël Coward, of course. 

Now try to imagine him turning eighty. 

“We’re the villains now, darling,” she occasionally thinks of ringing up John Deacon, and saying softly in his ear. All that rebellion. Well, not you and I perhaps. Who knew? 

**Rape and abuse: The music industry’s dark side exposed, BBC News, 2017**

He was certainly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, and for a long time (she’s never admitted it to anyone but her own children), she thought perhaps he was a hermaphrodite. That his funny look and his way of talking could be that, a biological oddity. 

“Mum, you can’t say _hermaphrodite_ , Christ, please–”

“But he wasn’t, was he? Surely it would be public knowledge by now…”

“No. No, of course he wasn’t. And you must never tell anyone I even thought it. I – it was wrong of me.” 

She doesn’t tell them everything. In a way it’s embarrassing for them to know she made such an error, when really he was just a queer the whole time, from day one. 

Silly Mum, couldn’t tell what was blindingly obvious. 

He was delicate under her hands. Not like other men. His arms were exceedingly thin: it was like touching a girl at school when you were in gym or acting in a play. She dressed him in a blouse she loved, cotton lace and the colour of café au lait. His eyes looked out at her shyly. Whatever he wore outside would be a costume, a servant of his glamour, but it wasn’t like that in the flat. He was nervous, proud, horribly upset by the names people threw at him. 

One thing she’s never betrayed is that he couldn’t keep a stiffy. He’d blush and say he did want to, he did, darling, please, believe me. She remembers a way he had of tipping his head back when he was about to weep, swallowing hard. It was meant to stop the tears but it only looked silly. She never told him, and later she wondered occasionally if he still did it – if he did it with men. Was it an affectation for her? Maybe he no longer needed it.

He would turn away from her, hiding his mouth and wiping at his eyes quite viciously. His feelings made him angry. 

His skin was as soft as hers. They shared a bottle of almond oil in those days.

**Police Officers repeatedly failed sex victims, The Telegraph, 2012**

And if he did show up with bruises, why would you ask? You learn to keep a still tongue in your head. 

You learn, in a life like hers, the value of quiet. Who talks, who looks, who listens; who is heard and who is not. She can still talk with only her hands. In some ways that is easier. 

He said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” 

She said, “Freddie, is there something – wrong?”

No, no, there isn’t, it’s nerves. 

You can’t possibly be a virgin, love. 

No. No, dear, I’m not. 

**Boy George reveals his shame at keeping male escort prisoner, The Mirror, 2017**

She’s drinking a turmeric latte and idly clicking through pictures of Lydia’s daughter’s new baby on Facebook. They’re still deciding on the name, and it seems funny to have all these pictures out in the world already before the poor thing has its label, its sticker. What if it ever had to be evacuated? You could lose it in a trice. 

Ancient history now. It felt so recent in her girlhood, when the last scars lingered on London’s changing face. 

Every time the bell at the café door jangles she instinctively looks up. Unless it’s a well-known place she still can’t quite get comfortable: God, what an inheritance. Years of this, and I wasn’t ever even famous, she thinks, switching her phone off. Not a bloody note. It isn’t as if there is anyone here to recognise her, to pester, but how can you lose the anxiety, the expectation? Nobody’s ever spat at her but she expects it one day. You’d think getting old would be the best mask. It is not.

She’s read more, the past few years, but she won’t take a book out of her handbag here, won’t let her guard down like that. Only a little time to kill –

And what a thought that is, one that she remembers swearing off for life. Now she knows better. You can’t turn all time to good, forcing it with the fierceness of grief into diamond after diamond. Sharp and brilliant. As if to say: fuck you for taking them all, at least I have this, and I won’t waste it, I’ll take it, I won’t throw away a second! 

She liked that poem about the art of losing. As if it’s something you can do in any way other than ungraciously, selfishly, at the top of your voice. Well. So I was widowed, more or less. As good as. 

As near as nothing. 

Now there are many more things she would ask, if they could have their time over. Yes, even if he wouldn’t answer. Yes, all the same, if he wouldn’t say a single word. Somehow she feels there would be value even in the asking, regardless of what he might do. He could strike her? Only he’d never do that. 

She wants to put her arms around him and say, it’s all right, darling. It really is. Whatever happened, you know. 

He loved her silence. Now she thinks, I was afraid to listen. 

**How Top of the Pops was a breeding ground for sexual abusers, The Independent, 2016**

“So,” she said. “Tell me about it. Was she nice?” 

She stroked his narrow thigh. Good gracious, she thought, what a nervy boy. Maybe it’s just a bad day?

“It wasn’t a girl,” he said. She went still.

Oh.

It – it wasn’t a boy. Mary. He was a bit older. 

Freddie.

She didn’t want to know how old. Or perhaps more to the point, how young. 

Now she would rather like to know. Is it prurient? Maybe. It would answer a few things she still wonders about. 

After that, she remembers they mostly stopped trying. She’d touched his face, his cheeks, a measure of comfort ... until a tear struck her hand and she pulled back. 

**Jimmy Savile was hiding in the light, The Guardian, 2012**

One day when it’s all over the news, she rushes to the bathroom and can’t stop being sick. They’re worried about her – of course they think it’s cancer, everyone thinks that once you’re old enough for it to be a reasonable probability. 

She knows that it isn’t. 

Were we free? What was the quality of that happiness? And was it happiness at all? 

I saw Freddie weep far too many times, and I thought it was temperament, my gamin, my enfant terrible, my wild boy. He wasn’t always sad, God knows. It wasn’t the way they’re saying, not if you were going round with good people, not if they took care of you. 

The winters were very cold, that’s for sure, and he hated that. All those Novembers. No proper time of day – that’s a poem, isn’t it? She learnt it off for school, oh, so long ago. 

The sight of Freddie coming in out of the fog, like an angel, his dark curls floating in the thickened air. 

How can it become this new canvas, how can it all belong to other people now? This chaos. This filth where there was once such gaiety. They’re talking about an era, and –

This is not the past, she thinks, it is my life. My one and only. Stop touching it. Go away. 

**‘I wouldn’t want this for anybody’s daughter’, The Guardian, 2018**

*


	7. Paul Prenter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that this chapter is graphic and distressing.

*

_Yes, there will also be singing_  
 _About the dark times._  
– Bertolt Brecht

*

He’s a patient man but the clinging gets on his last bloody nerve. No, he wants to say, fuck, not in the mood for this, don’t paw at me, don’t give me those eyes.

Instead he tips out a generous drink. 

“Get it down you, come on! Stop being a misery guts.” 

Pushing it on him, but he isn’t reluctant. Delicate, talented hands come up to take the glass. 

“We’ll have a good time,” he coaxes. “We always have a great fucking time, don’t we. I’ll look after you, you silly tart!” 

Freddie’s eyes are glazed; he looks sleepy, it’s his childish, out-to-lunch expression. Radical. He’s going to be such good company, like this! A laugh a minute. Jesus fuck. 

Now, _that_ would be a good night. 

There’s something pleasantly unsettling about the picture in his mind’s eye, Freddie bent over, on his hands and knees in some vague, dusty corner of Jerusalem, Jesus buried inside him up to the hilt, moaning as Freddie accepts, accepts– 

**Paul Prenter’s notebook, undated:**  
DK owes £180, paid by Thur  
Mem. STRAWBERRY for entry at [ _illegible_ ]  
LMB £220 extant  
spk to Dr H

“Schmarrn!” 

It’s a growl, more than a word, and he watches Freddie shudder in what resembles real fear. Unlike him: he’s not one to shrink back from a bit of rough trade, and Andreas will be good to him, the way he likes it, no wasting time, a hard go of it. This is no moment for playing the blushing virgin, fuck’s sake. He’s already loose, already fucked, sloppy with cum inside those leather shorts. 

He puts an arm round Freddie’s waist and pulls him away, catching the other man’s eye as he does so, letting him know, mutely: it’s not a rebuff. 

“Hinterzimmer,” he murmurs through a gap in the crowd, once he’s parked Freddie near the bar with some vodka to get him back to his usual self. 

“Spaeter—I’ll give him something to relax him—Tropfen, ja...” He’s keeping his voice low, and his German is sodding terrible, but the man nods. 

He turns away, because he doesn’t want to lose track of Freddie while it’s still early. He’s looking especially edible, all peachy skin and narrow limbs, but he has the body hair of a man—he’s no child, for all that he throws tantrums like one, for all that he’s scared of the bloody dark. 

Seeing him pull up his shorts, freshly screwed, given no time to clean up or even wipe—hiding his reddened bottom away in their black leather shell, and the inside, the inside! Dappled with come now. Sticky. Let’s hope they’re salvageable, Paul thinks, smiling, as he signals for more drinks. He looks sweet in those, like an oversexed young goatherd. 

Another man sidles up to him, and he thinks it’s Christof, he’s the one with the acne scars, isn’t he? Not quite ugly, though. Not on any list, not yet—but they’ve heard about him. 

“Fredchen?” the man says. “Dein _boy_?”

“Ja, gleich—gleiche Preis,” Paul manages, “Ihre Freunde…”

“Sicher, ja.” He’s nodding, already half gone in the smoke.

Freddie is looking a little tired, with rings under his eyes and chapped lips. It doesn’t spoil him, though, it only lends an air of effort to his drinking, his hard swallows; it will only make him more pliable, softer, gentler, in the end. He’s lovely on nights like that, makes it all seem worth it. 

“Weisses?” It’s Jonathan giggling, and that will pep Freddie up for a while longer, won’t it? so much the better, so much the sweeter for all of us. 

“Freddie!” he shouts, in the roaring noise that’s risen up around them. “Come here, Jonny’s got something for you. A present…” 

He sing-songs the last word, because he knows Freddie will be over like a shot, he’ll stop holding onto fat bloody Winnie and come and see. Can’t resist. He’s too predictable. 

Freddie leaps forward, eyes a-glow, and leans on Paul’s shoulder. “What,” he pants, “Please tell me!”

“Well, here’s a clue.” Paul steadies him. “If you don’t like it, that’ll get right up his nose–!”

Freddie laughs and nips at Paul’s neck shyly. “I’ll like it,” he says, on a giggly rush of air, “I’ll like it, I’ll like it, I’ll like it!” 

**Paul Prenter’s notebook, undated:**  
Damages c. 1880 DM (tell F, pay before 18/10)  
Liang charged extra  
Dry cleaning 117 DM

You’d think he was a fucking nun, the looks he serves up. Jesus, he’s as bent as they are! Nothing wrong with Freddie going out, blowing off a little steam. He can come along, and sometimes does—otherwise it’s free time off from constant fetching and carrying, and all the bloody nannying Freddie seems to need.

After all, he’s done the job himself. Phoebe ought to be kissing his feet for taking Freddie out on his own, or with Winnie when Freddie insists on it. It wouldn’t be true to say he looks back on his days of directly assisting Freddie with distaste, because the fringe benefits were—tangible, and at times lucrative. He’s not one to turn a blind eye to that.

But Phoebe! Oh, pure as the driven snow, my arse. He’d have Freddie in a second if it wouldn’t fuck up the job, and that’s understandable, but people who live in glass bathhouses… 

_Oh Paulie, dear! I had to get the doctor for him, he wasn’t waking up._

It’s twaddle. He always wakes up. Sometimes it takes a while, but he’s like a bloody—elf, a sprite, or something, small, of course he’ll go down hard.

_He was rather a mess, you know, last night–_

It’s called getting a ruddy big cock in your arse, Freestone. Not just one, not just two. It’s called fun. It’s called living, finally, after the long grey drag of boyhood. 

“He seemed okay to me,” Paul says. “He had a bloody good night.” 

**Paul Prenter’s notebook, undated:**  
Mem. DEVIL  
AW £100 extant  
Collect tomorrow 

He finds Freddie burrowed into the bed, under two blankets, still heaving with tears, although whatever sound he’s making is muffled by the coverings.

“Do you want to come out?” Paul hazards. “Come out, and tell your Uncle Paul all about it. Can’t be all that bad, can it? Or you’d be in the hospital.” 

The hump in the bed isn’t perceptibly less quivery, so he says, “I’ll go and ask Phoebe to put some more tea on—since you haven’t drunk this one, you profligate—and then I’ll come back and you can sit on my knee like you used to. Tell me all your dirty secrets.” 

He doesn’t mind ordering Phoebe around a bit. He’s not one to be a cunt to his juniors, but he won’t pretend there’s no pleasure at all in requesting the tea rather than making it. 

When he goes back in, Freddie’s out of the bed, sitting on top of it in a desolate ball of slender limbs. He’s only got a kimono on, and Paul can see straight up it! Nothing else _at all_. All fur coat and no knickers, you are, he thinks. But you carry it off, I’ll give you that. 

Valiant efforts have clearly been made in the direction of not crying any more, but the day has not yet been won. Sluggish tears are still sliding down Freddie’s cheeks, and he hasn’t even been shaved yet—he looks terribly louche and wicked. 

Paul sits down in the armchair and pats his lap. “Come on, then, _Fredchen_ ,” he says. “What are you waiting for?” 

Freddie swallows and approaches with odd shyness, but once he is being held, he seems to relax: he seems himself again, fragile but familiar. 

“I didn’t have a—a nice time,” he says, very small, quiet, like a boy home from a rotten date. 

“Oh no?” He’s running his fingers over Freddie’s head, stroking the soft hair there and feeling little skull bones underneath. He traces each wet cheekbone in turn. 

“No,” Freddie says, “I didn’t—I wasn’t good, I don’t think he liked it. He seemed—disappointed, but he didn’t make me leave.” 

None of this sounds like it merits a self-caging under your blankets, Paul thinks. He says, “You can’t always be on top form, baby. Try again tonight, before we go out.” 

“No!” Freddie cries, “I fell asleep, and—he—he made me come back here, I had to ring up Phoebe. I shouldn’t have tried to stay away on my own. I—I can’t actually do that.”

“One of the bad nights?” Paul says, keeping it gentle and euphemistic. He thinks it’s bloody weird too, if he’s honest, but to Freddie he tries to pretend he doesn’t care. And he has seen Freddie have awful dreams, that’s quite true; he’s seen him scream and thrash, and even get out of bed and walk about, crying, without waking up once. He’s tempted to put it down to temperament, some musician thing, but he’s spent enough time with the rest of Queen now to know that really, it’s only Freddie. 

“He wouldn’t let me apologise,” Freddie whispers. “I didn’t—I don’t remember what I was dreaming, only that it was awful–”

I’d kick you out of my bed too, if you weren’t paying me a Queen’s ransome, Paul thinks, but he’s not without pity, not without the capacity to see that the boy in Freddie is foremost again, and that it’s the hour of petting and coaxing and humouring. 

“Silly-billy,” he says. “He’ll forgive you! You’re much too fun to break it off with, dear, you’ll see.” 

**Paul Prenter’s notebook, undated:**  
08936[illegible] Klaus  
0894448905 Jonathan  
Dr H away back 22/05  
Try Dr V?

“Not to panic, not to panic,” he’s sick of hearing himself saying it. Even to Winnie, which does fuck-all good since the man’s practically illiterate and knows no English. 

“Baby,” he says, slapping Freddie’s cheek gently. “Come on, wake up. Oh—Halt dein Maul, Kirchberger!” It’s one of the few phrases he knows he has just right. “Freddie…” 

When he stirs, he looks happy, more peaceful than he has in months. 

“It was nice,” he whispers through a furry, half-numb mouth. “Nice, pretty.” 

**Paul Prenter’s notebook, undated:**  
Damage 800 DM urgent  
Schwulesaunen Sat/Sun

“Are you sure he enjoyed it, last night?” 

He wants to tell Phoebe to fuck off, stop being so pious and ask Freddie himself if he’s going to be a nosy bitch. It wouldn’t be wise, though, because he doesn’t want Phoebe in a snit, refusing to sort Freddie out afterwards when everyone else is knackered. His own tolerance for sponging off sick was sorely tried in earlier years and he doesn’t want it to fall on him again. 

“You might’ve never had a tear,” he says bluntly. “But I have, and you know as well as I do what he likes. I’m surprised it’s not more often. Christ, not everything’s my fault, you know. Just give him prunes and some pain drops, whatever you have in.” 

Peter says, “Oh, we have everything. I mean, not prunes ... but we can buy them. It’s not just—sorry, look, I didn’t mean to blame you. It’s—it was awful, he really was bleeding quite a bit.”

“Yes, I know, who do you think paid off the damn cabbie?” 

“He’s been so quiet–”

“Look, he’s sleeping it off. I’ll go and sit with him if you want, but it’s nothing. The scene here’s different, you’re used to London, but he’s not, he isn’t new here.” 

There are church bells outside, cutting through the rain like a gleam of light—but they both know Freddie will not be woken by them. 

**Paul Prenter’s notebook, undated:**  
Mem. RENAISSANCE  
G £100  
L £35  
hintenzimmer M-F next week, kingsize

*


End file.
